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Ahmed Khomeini Is Dead; Son of Ayatollah Khomeini

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Ahmed Khomeini, a leading Islamic radical who was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's son and a member of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, died yesterday at a hospital in North Teheran. He was about 50 and lived in the Teheran area.

Mr. Khomeini had been in a coma since Sunday, when he suffered cardiac arrest and was admitted to the hospital, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

One of his doctors said he died some hours after he was put on a life-support machine.

"He was a prominent face in the struggle against the oppressors," the news agency said, "and spared no efforts to safeguard the legacy of his immortal father." The Government announced two days of national mourning.

A torch-bearer for his father's anti-Western radicalism, Ahmed Khomeini was viewed as Ayatollah Khomeini's closest aide during the decade after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Many speculated he might eventually succeed his father as Iran's political leader, but he lost a brief power struggle with the pragmatic Speaker of Parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was elected President after Ayatollah Khomeini's death in June 1989.

Mr. Khomeini instead became the overseer of his father's mausoleum south of Teheran and was named to the Supreme National Security Council, which oversees defense and security policy and coordinates intelligence activities.

As his father's chief of staff, Ahmed Khomeini played a prominent role in the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981, making tough anti-American statements and visiting the United States Embassy compound to congratulate the captors of more than 50 American hostages there. The hostage-takers were said to have told him in advance of their plans to invade the compound.

He spoke out frequently against the United States and Israel and what he described as exploitative Iranian capitalists.

In 1993 he denounced the peace accord signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization as "treachery to the aspirations of the Palestinian nation and the world of Islam."

Addressing himself to the United States during a speech last month marking the 16th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, he cried "Death to you!" as thousands of Iranian listeners cheered.

Mr. Khomeini also wielded influence over Iranian Government policy through allies in the Revolutionary Guards militia and in other centers of power.

News reports have suggested recently that he may have been connected to the Iranian Government's smuggling of military equipment and parts from Europe.

A Shiite Muslim cleric who held the religious title of hojatolislam, Ahmed Khomeini first came to international attention during the Islamic revolution that ousted the pro-Western regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi in 1979.

Television broadcasts showed him at his father's side when the Ayatollah returned to Teheran on Jan. 31, 1979, after 15 years in exile. The Shah's Government was toppled 10 days later.

As the Ayatollah's chief assistant and only surviving son -- two others had died -- Mr. Khomeini wielded immense power by controlling access to him.

He quickly assumed a prominent role when the hostage crisis began on Nov. 4, 1979. By some accounts militant Iranian students informed him in advance of what they originally planned as a sit-in at the United States Embassy.

Recalling the days after the takeover, Gary G. Sick, a White House aide at the time, later wrote: "It was with relief that we learned that Ahmed was on his way to the embassy. What we had not expected was that Ahmed would clamber excitedly over the embassy wall, losing his turban in the process, and congratulate the students for their action. As that fact became known, the deadly seriousness of the situation became apparent for the first time."

Scores of Americans in the embassy were held prisoner until early 1981, when the United States released more than $7 billion in Iranian assets and the captives were set free.

Later a former hostage, Robert O. Blucker, an embassy economics officer, described watching Mr. Khomeini visit the compound "to see the Persians and greet them and encourage them in what they were doing."

"He was fingering his worry beads and smiling and talking to them," Mr. Blucker went on. "He didn't want to look at any of us."

Mr. Khomeini asserted that documents found at the embassy showed that "some of the hostages are officially C.I.A. agents," and repeated a threat by his father to put some of the captives on trial for spying if the recently dethroned Shah was not returned to Iran.

Accounts of Khomeini family history vary, but the Egyptian editor Mohamed Heikal, in his book "The Return of the Ayatollah" (1981, Deutsch), and the Indian author Dilip Hiro, in his book "Iran under the Ayatollahs" (1985, Routledge), have written that Ahmed was one of eight children born to Ayatollah Khomeini and his wife, Khadijah.

Before the revolution, Ahmed Khomeini underwent military training in 1974 and 1975 with Palestinian fighters outside Tyre in Lebanon.

He is survived by his wife and three sons, of whom the eldest, Hassan, 23, is studying theology in Qom, a religious city 75 miles south of Teheran.

A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on March 18, 1995, on Page 1001010 of the National edition with the headline: Ahmed Khomeini Is Dead; Son of Ayatollah Khomeini. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe